Chibibel

Chibibel is a character by DAZ3D.
Poser cr2 (character rigging) files are quite heterogenous. So until now Chibibel has been the main reference implementation for cr2 importer.

Things implemented so far:

• Parsing actor tree with channels. Actors (or props) are just a fancy name for bones (or frames) - i.e. positioned and transformed controllers for skin data. Channels are elementary property controllers - like individual rotation angles, morphs and so on. The main problem is, that the whole cr2 file format is mostly just (text based) dump of internal Poser controller structure as opposed to properly designed file format, so it contains many duplicate entries and meaningless data.
• Twist and joint bend zones (no welds yet). Poser is special because the bending of joints is controlled with different weights for each main rotation axis - and these are specified algorithmically by line segments, angles and spheres. I am somewhat sceptical whether this would allow more natural movements - the weight system with extra bones and constraints should IMHO be easier and more powerful. But maybe it would be too difficult to set up for 3D modeling novices...
• Welding obj meshes. Obj files cut meshes to groups, that cannot have interconnections. So cr2 file specifies, which groups should have their identically positioned vertices merged.
• Loading textures from image files. Poser has quite complex material system, but currently Khayyam only looks it for diffuse texture entry and loads it as plain texture. Hopefully more is coming.
• Conforming objects can be dropped to the same figure object as body. They behave surprisingly well, moving and bending with skeleton. But morphs cannot currently be linked, so if clothing has conforming morphs, they have to be adjusted manually.
• Morphs work, but their values are not saved in XML data.
• Props can be loaded but cannot be directly associated with bones. Props is (another) Poser fancy name for immutable objects (like tools, buildings etc).

Kuroyume Unoffcial CR2 File Specification has been invaluable resource for digging through the cryptic character data of Poser files.

Obligatory screenshot - Chibibel selling pottery in market (rendered with POV-Ray)